An assistant nurse at a Madrid hospital where two Ebola patients died is infected with the virus herself, health officials said Monday, in what is believed to be the first time a person has contracted the disease in Europe.

“Two tests were done and the two were positive,” a spokesman for the health department of the regional government of Madrid told AFP.

The woman works at Madrid’s La Paz-Carlos III hospital where two missionaries who were repatriated from Africa with Ebola died from the disease, a spokeswoman for the hospital said.

“We do not know yet if she treated any of the two missionaries,” the spokeswoman told AFP.

It spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of someone who has the virus and the only way to stop an outbreak is to isolate those who are infected.

The Ebola epidemic that has been raging in west Africa has so far claimed almost 3,500 lives, with Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone worst hit.
T
here is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola. Of several prototype treatments in the pipeline, one dubbed ZMapp has been fast-tracked for use, developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical in California, in conjunction with the US Army.